Monday, 12 November 2012

Day of 40k. November style!

So another hugely satisfying day of 40k gaming for us at The Tredegar Reavers, 2 large games of 40k went on and Huws Pirate game made a splash too. This post however, is dedicated to the game I participated in, a nice chunky game of 40k.

We had two opposing sides, Imperium versus Chaos. The sides were;

Me/Big Kev - Evandalists Space Marines and Tau allies

Bam - His mysterious Space Marines

Iain - Space Wolves

Carl Grey Knights.

Louis - Alpha Legion and Traitor Guard

Chris - Khorne Bezerkers and Death Guard

Alun - Daemons of too many varieties!

It was amazing to finally see most of my army out on the board, although some of it was not used. I think we had between 18-20k in points total, and thankfully it wasn't as slow moving as the Apocalypse game we played at Warhammer World.... mainly because we didn't have 16 players in one game! For the mission we adapted two missions from the rulebook to meet the size of the game. We had 6 objectives, but also victory points could be gained as in Purge the Alien. This meant we had a lot of tactical choices to make when capturing objectives... especially when Alun suggested a special rule.... In addition to him deploying daemons in the normal way, if a Chaos unit held an objective for a turn he could bring his units in within 12" of it. This made holding the two objectives in our deployment zone a huge priority, and also the two in dead mans land would need to be kept clear. We felt we had a good gun line and so wanted to hold back and then surge forth in the closing couple of turns to claim the open two objectives.

We won the roll for deployment and went first. This is our Deployment below!

Grey Knights and Space Wolves held the right Flank, myself and Bam held the centre and then both me and Iain held the left too. The chaos forces deployed and prompty stole the initiative, even though Alun and his Daemons didn't want too! As a lot of the Chaos forces were off the board, we escaped only losing a couple of models and no victory points lost, we had a chance at the bonus of first blood... which was then captured as a Nurgle Land Raider was blown up. Good start! We managed to get a few more kills and that ended the first turn.

Turn two, and the Daemons turn up... Ouch! Them having to deepstrike basically meant kill them asap or be charged by a close combat elite force. In our deployment zone we found blood letters, lesser daemons, Slaaneshi riders, warp talons, and a Great Unclean One. Louis' Valkyrie made an appearence too... but I'd chatted to Bam when making our forces and had contingencies for this! We had taken two Bastions, Bams had a Quadgun and mine had the Icarus Lascannon. Manning mine however, was Telion(or at least my Squat Sniper, not decided on a name yet!). This meant I had a 96" range st9 sniper! The Valkyrie flew on and was promptly blown up by Bams Quadgun... I didn't even get to fire! Only two crew survived, one Veteran and a Comissar Lord.

A combination of Bams Predator Executioner and Iains Plasma Long fangs wiped out the darmons threatening the right flank, while a Tactical squad belonging to Bam took out the Warp Talons. My own Plasma devastators and Tau fire warriors wiped out the bloodletters, and then firepower from 4 dreadnoughts managed leave the Great Unclean One with two wounds left, and my Snipers fire were able to finish it off. Not even Nurgle likes the toxins of the Imperium!

Battle was soon met in the middle as the Grey Knights advanced and were soon caught up in a long protracted combat with the Chaos forces on the right flank. Chaos Champions were killed, and Abbadon and Draigo battled it out for a few turns of combat until Draigo eventually fell.

Turn three saw the chaos forces advancing ever closer, looking to
capture the middle objectives so their daemon allies could safely join
battle closer to our lines. They pushed up the flanks, while we kept the centre line of cultists and daemons at bay with concentrated fire.

Louis' forgefiend proved effective, not so much in how much damaged it did, but how much we aimed at it to try and silence its deadly weapons. We failed in this!

Louis' maulerfiend, aka 'Buster' did some damage too, earning its weight in points back by quite a bit! I believe Bam took it out later in the game with a well aimed hunter killer missile. Phew!

Chris and Carl duel with the dice as Khorne meets Grey Knights.

As the Chaos forces advanced, myself and Bam began our distraction tactic. Several of my Tau units, Legion of the Damned and a Drop Pod carrying a heavy flamer toting dread, and a couple of Bams units deepstriked onto the rear of the Chaos lines. Several of the dangerous chaos units had to turn back and deal with this new threat, giving our main line much more time to deal with the impending threats!

More daemons are found among our lines, including a Blood Thirster, two units of blood letters, while a gaggle of Greater Daemons advance up our left flank and take on the Space Wolves and two of my Tactical squads, including one Kairos Fatewaever. His ability of re-rolling failed armour and invun saves proved huge for the daemons, as they stubbornly refused to die as they killed our forces!

Being unble to wipe out the bloodletter units and Blood Thirster at our rear they charged into the Grey Hunters holding our rear most objective. We had a healthy lead at this point, but if the daemons could capture this objective and a couple of the others they would close the gap sinificantly. After the assault just 2 grey hunters remained, and we would struggle to kill these.

In the centre of the battlefield, battle was met between my Chapter Master, Chaplain and terminators and Kharn and his retinue of Bezerkers. One Bezerker and an untouched Kharn were left standing, and I lost three terminators after the first round of combat. My chapter master, Vincent Eniko was unable to catch Kharn off his guard, but then Orneus Gyozo stepped in with an almighty punch of his power fist that could have been the Emperors fist himself and crushed the mighty Traitors helmut. With the blow, one of the Imperiums biggest threats fell to the ground and my newly made chaplains first kill couldn't have been any bigger! The unit got back into the Land Raider and surged forth to claim an objective, Vincent Eniko being a scoring unit due to his Warlord Trait.

Iains wolf lord on thunderwolf was stuck in combat with this beast for a few turns! The decimator eventually ran the warrior down, crushing the wolf beneath its armoured feet and knocking the life out of the wolf.

In the closing moments, combined fire from 2 devastator squads, fire warriors, and a tactical squad managed to kill a blood letter squad that were standing before Second Company Captain Erasmus Torgeaz and his Bike riding squad. The stormed into the combat, impact hits killing the last couple of blood letters in combat with the grey hunters and my Captain challanged the Avatar of War. The Blood Thirster greedily accepted and struck at Torgeaz with daemonic speed, two hits getting through the Iron Halo. Bloodied and battered, Erasmus delivered furious blows that must have matched the visceral brutality of the Blood Thirster itself and took its last couple of wounds off him. A huge kill for Torgeaz, and objetive rescued!

So a great game, and I'm sure the other guys had some great moments too, due to my age I only remember mine though! Ha. The gamed ended 49 points to the Imperium and 32 to Chaos. A glorius victory and many honours earned. Orneus Gyozo, Erasmus Torgeaz and my Snipers being my own personal men of the battle.

I'll do another post soon fleeting over the other two games that were played, one of which contain 2 biotitans, a harridan and an Eldar titan. It looked cracking fair play and was an incredibly close game! I'll be asking the guys for their moments to bring to you, along with some pictures of the pirates game Huw put on that some of the guys played.

Some great news too, we made enough money from the day that we shall soon be sending off our GCN application and the insurance money, so huge boost for the club! Makes me a very proud Chairman. We're now going to look at another all dayer over the Xmas period, as our club night falls on Xmas and New Years eve... so no club for 2 weeks? NO WAY!!! All dayer needed it seems! Andrew mentioned about perhaps doing a fast paced tournement style day, which I think would be cracking! So we'll get some planning done soon and see what we can do. All in all, a great day and some cracking moments for my Evandalists... expect not only another post on the day but also a video with some footage in and also I may do a little story based from the viewpoint of my Evandalists. For now though....